Boucher and Lee Jump Start Universal Service Fund Reform Debate

Reps. Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Lee Terry (R-Nebraska) released a discussion draft of legislation entitled the "Universal Service Reform Act of 2009." The bill proposes to improve the Universal Service Fund (USF) and ensure its continued viability by broadening the base of contributions into the USF and controlling distributions from the fund. The legislation would also allow use of the Fund for broadband deployment. The proposed bill will also control costs by directing the FCC to adopt a competitive bidding process to determine which wireless carriers will receive universal service support, and will cap the total amount of universal service support and changes the calculation methodology for the non-rural, high-cost portion of the fund from geographic to wire center averaging. The bill also proposes to direct the FCC to establish and implement performance goals for each universal service fund program and to determine the appropriate methodology for audits of universal service fund recipients. A legislative hearing on the Boucher-Terry discussion draft is scheduled on Tuesday, November 17.